The Wedding From Hell
by PrincessDaydream77
Summary: Mary and Matthew's wedding brings all branches of the Crawley family together. But when Robert clashes with Tom, Violet clashes with Martha and Rosamund clashes with everyone, Mary and Matthew will certainly have a day to remember!
1. Secrets Revealed

The Wedding from Hell

Summary : Mary and Matthew's wedding brings all branches of the Crawley family together. But when Robert clashes with Tom, Violet clashes with Martha and Rosamund clashes with everyone, Mary and Matthew will certainly have a day to remember!

Disclaimer : Nothing belongs to me (except plot lol!)

Chapter One

The day had finally come. The day they'd all been waiting for for just about eight years. The wedding had brought excitement and joy to the entire of Downton village. This was also the day that the entire Crawley family would come together for the first time since before Sybil was born. Somehow, Mary Josephine Crawley did not think that that would be a good thing. She looked across her room. There hung three dresses. Two were lilac with white lace trimmings and purple and white lace hair ribbons. These dresses were for the bridesmaids, Mary's younger sisters, Edith and Sybil. For some reason, Cora had asked her to make Sybil's dress a little larger than her normal size. I wonder why, thought Mary. Her thoughts were, however, interupted, when she caught sight of the white lace dress hanging in between the lilac. My wedding dress, thought Mary. After staring at these dresses for the best part of half an hour, Mary decided it was time to rise. After all, there was plenty to do.

Mary walked down the stairs, holding onto the banisters and stroking the lilac flowers that were entwined on white lace ribbon around the banisters. She couldn't help but think of the time when similar flowers had been entwined around the banisters for Matthew's wedding to Lavinia. But of course, fate snatched that from them and gave her another chance, for which she was eternally grateful.

As she entered the dining room, she was almost pounced upon by Cora, Violet, Edith and Rosamund, who had just arrived from London the previous evening.

"Mary!" exclaimed Cora, pulling her daughter into an embrace. "Are you ready for your big day?"

"Yes, Mama, I wouldn't be marrying him otherwise! Is Sybil here yet?"

"No, but she just telephoned to say that she and Tom..."

Cora paused and gave Robert a chilling look, as he had winced at the sound of the former chauffeur's first name being used in the same sentence as his youngest daughter's.

"...have just come from the boat and should be here in about an hour or two."

"Good. Is anyone else coming from the family."

"No, just Sybil and Tom left. Your grandmother and Rosamund are already here and Isobel's coming down with Matthew."

"But what about..." Mary trailed off, when she caught sight of the look Edith was giving her. The look that she knew, from her childhood, to mean 'stop talking or the remainder of your life will not be worth living'. She was busy trying to make up an excuse, when she found one provided for her, when Edith ran back from the window.

"Look, a car. It's Sybil and...good lord, Mary, you should see this!"


	2. Baby Bliss

Chapter Two

A/N : I'm trying to pace my updates, because I have writer's block, but I gave up on that and I've just decided to put it up as soon as I finish it. Also, soz about the lack of updates on 'Like Mother, Like Daughter', but I've got serious writer's block on that too.

Cora, Robert, Mary and Edith all ran through the entrance hall, towards the front door. Once they'd reached the already open door, Cora bolted through it, while Mary and Edith stayed back out of shock and Robert out of spite for the man helping his youngest daughter out off the car in which he had driven himself and his wife to her childhood home. As soon as Tom had released his wife's hand, Cora flung her arms around Sybil and held her so tight that it looked as if they would need a rope and a grappling hook to prise her away. Edith stepped forward to embrace her sister and when she had finished, Mary did the same. When she pulled away from her sister, she realised what she had felt. She looked down towards Sybil's stomach and saw that it was rounded, not to a great extent, but enough to be noticed at close range.

"How long?"

"Only four months to go now, I'm five months gone."

"Why didn't you tell us?" cut in Edith.

"I wanted to tell you, face to face. I didn't believe that it was the type of news that would be best conveyed on paper, or by telephone. Besides, I wanted to see your reaction!"

"There's the cheeky Sybil that we all know and love! Welcome back, Sybil, darling!"

"Thank you! I've missed you all so much, you wouldn't believe it!"

In all the commotion, the only person who had really stopped to notice that Tom Branson even existed, and was no longer the chauffeur, was Robert, who acknowledged him with a stony glare, then began to walk inside with the rest of the family. 'This is going to take some getting used to' thought Tom 'but I don't think it's going to be plain sailng from hereon in.'

With that, he grabbed the bags and began to make his way inside.


	3. Beauty and Blame

Chapter Three

A/N: Thanks to my reviewers, Robert Cora Fan, XxTassBxX, Agnes Robinson, , namelesspanda, sapphirespells, Lady Eleanor Boleyn and my bezzie, headinclouds123. Also, I'm working on the 7th chapter of Like Mother, Like Daughter, but I've still got writer's block, so I'm trying to write a couple of sentences a day to get inspiration.

Cora was beginning to get frustrated and was pacing up and down the library, with Robert walking after her, trying to get her to stop pacing, but failing miserably and, due to his actions, pacing himself.

"Oh, where are they?" exclaimed Cora, looking from the door to her wristwatch and back again, then repeating the action several times.

"They will be here soon, darling, they are probably just finishing off their make-up. You know what the girls can be like, and if Mary's at the helm, everything will have to be perfect. You know what she can be like in a position of power, she grasps it with both hands and runs with it(!)"

"Yes, I know, but if she does not hurry up, she will have grasped the power to be late for her own wedding!"

"Cora, she has been waiting for this day for at least six years, trust me. She will not miss this, it is too important."

"You're right. Of course you are." reasoned Cora, stopping her pacing, turning on the spot and wrapping her arms around her husband's neck, pecking him lightly on the cheek. They soon broke apart abruptly when they heard the sound of scurrying footsteps, indicating the arrival of Robert's elder sister, Rosamund Painswick from the upstairs landing.

"Robert!" she cried, her desperate attempts to still her flustered composure being utterly destroyed by her panted breathing.

"Rosamund." greeted Robert, his face in turn barely suppressing a smirk at his elder sister's face, which was rapidly increasing it's resemblance to an overly sun-dried tomato.

"What's the matter? Where are the girls?"

"They're coming now, Robert, they're coming!" Rosamund near squealed, barely containing herself from bouncing back up the stairwell in glee. And sure enough, they did.

At this unmeaning signal, two very different women enrobed in twin lilac silks stood together, issuing a collective gasp from the three Crawleys at the foot of the staircase.

"Oh, Edith! Sybil! You both look so beautiful!" cried Cora, tears of joy and disbelief cascading down her pale face.

"You think we look beautiful. I'd suggest looking up the stairwell, Mama." laughed Sybil, following her own instruction, closely followed by the rest of the family. There, draped in white at the top of the staircase, was Mary.

"Oh, Mary. You look absolutely beautiful." Rosamund cried, clapping her hands together with glee. Sybil and Edith nodded their heads in agreement, while Cora's face was buried so far into her hankerchief that she couldn't respond. She turned away to the window in an attempt to calm herself. Well, it had worked and her mouth dropped wide open. She turned back to her daughters, Mary now having descended the staircase, her face masked by shock.

"Right, girls. I want you to answer me truthfully. Which of you invited my mother?"

A/N: Cliffhanger! Please review!


	4. Unwelcome Arrivals

Chapter Four

A/N: Thanks to my reviewer for the last chapter, . You're amazing!

The large crimson car pulling up onto the driveway had luckily caught the attention of Mr. Carson as soon as it had entered the grounds, and he had summoned as many of the upstairs staff to the front door as he could, in an effort to have some sort of welcoming party for Mrs. Martha Levinson, who was reclining in the black leather back seat, genuinely smiling at the reception she was about to receive.

Her eldest daughter Cora's smile, however, was entirely faked. She would never have entirely welcomed her mother's arrival, but with the way that it had been sprung on her, she had had barely any time to even consider how she would react. She didn't even know who had invited the woman, as she certainly hadn't done.

The gilded door of the red vehicle opened and the redheaded occupant stepped out onto the gravel. The smile she had worn since she came into view had remained in place as she greeted her eldest daughter with a kiss on the cheek.

"Cora!" she exclaimed. "How very lovely to see you, darling."

"Welcome to Downton, Mama." replied Cora, her voice straining ever so slightly with the effort of sounding as if she welcomed her mother's arrival, when in fact she could not think of anywhere else she would rather her mother not be. Luckily, the elder American didn't notice Cora's strange behaviour, instead moving across the gravel to greet her granddaughters.

"Hello, Mary. Edith. Oh, Sybil, darling." greeted Martha, pecking each girl on the cheek in turn, while they each returned the greetings one by one, secret smiles concealed from her but shared subtly with each other.

"Hello, Grandmama." each said one after the other, managing rather successfully to keep their voices from wavering, due to the laughter they were keeping back at the expression on their mother's face.

"Oh, it's been far too long since I've seen all of you. Why, Sybil, the last time I saw you, you stood up to my hip, and now you're having a child of her own. It's almost unbelievable, but how dare you?! You are making me feel so old!" said Martha, her voice a little distant as she reminisced about the past, though she came back down to earth as Sybil began to speak.

"Well, I suppose we've all had to grow up as of late. Especially after the war." Sybil replied, more speaking to herself than addressing the others, though they all nodded in agreement to what she was saying. Sensing that the mood needed to be lightened, Martha turned to the eldest girl, smiling as she took in the white dress that adorned her.

"I am so excited, Mary. This is promising to be an unforgettable day." the eldest redhead commented, clapping her hands together as she spoke.

"Yes, it certainly will be!" Mary commented, still struggling to contain her laughter, especially at Edith and Sybil's attempts to conceal their own. Martha had not picked up on this, luckily, as she was led inside by Carson, but unfortunately for the girls, Cora had done, and she was not at all amused.

"Girls, I don't know which one of you did this, and I'm assuming it was either Mary or Edith, as Sybil can hardly remember your grandmother from the last time you saw her, but you need to stop messing around like this. You are showing me up, all three of you. Grow up, or Mary, you will end up destroying your own wedding day. You'll only marry Matthew once, so don't ruin the day by playing petty pranks." After her final sentence, Cora swept into the house after her mother, not wanting to leave Carson with such a talkative woman for longer than need be, as well as the fact that Violet was near to the door, and they did not need fireworks between the two of them so early in the morning.

"You know, she's probably right, Mary. We all like to have fun, but perhaps today isn't the day to do so." Sybil stated, rubbing slow circles on her heavy stomach as it pained her slightly.

"No, of course not. It is a British wedding after all. Fun is not seen to be appropriate." Mary joked.

"I couldn't agree more!" Martha hollered from the hallway, a laugh penetrating the agreement. None of the girls could see inside the hall, but each of them could imagine the look on Carson's face as he witnessed such common behaviour in the house. It was enough to bring all three of them back into a fit of giggles as they returned into their home.

"Now, come along, Mary!" Cora called to her eldest daughter, beckoning her and the younger two girls over to her. "We should be off. You don't want to keep Matthew waiting, do you?"

"No, Mama. I think I've kept him waiting for long enough." Mary admitted, eliciting a light chuckle from her mother and sisters.

"Yes, you certainly have. So, let's put him out of his misery, shall we?"

"We'd put him out of his misery if we told him to scarper!" Edith muttered, laughing a little at the joke she had made. In fact, the only person who did not laugh was Mary herself, though she didn't very well conceal her smirk at the remark.

"Sometimes it's nice to see the old Edith surface. It reminds me that you are still the girl I grew up with." Mary shot back, raising an eyebrow at the redhead.

"Girls, we don't have time to argue like this. If I'm not mistaken, we have a wedding to attend."

Just a mere half an hour later, and Mary stood outside the door of the Downton chapel, assembled alongside her sisters, her parents and Travis, who had attended the event for old time's sake, although not performing the wedding ceremony himself.

"Are you ready, my darling?" Robert asked his daughter, taking her arm as the organ music began to play.

"Of course I am, Papa." Mary replied, with confidence that could have easily been matched to her. "I've been ready for this moment all my life."

A/N: Aw! It's beautiful now, but wait until the reception! Please review it!


	5. Dancing on a Desert Island

Chapter Five

A/N: Thank you to Cls2011, , Lady Eleanor Boleyn and rosetylerandthedoctor for reviewing the last chapter.

The doors were opened, and every simple pair of eyes inside the church turned to Mary. Gasps of delight and wonder filled the room, the most audible coming from Mrs. Hughes, who had covered her mouth with her hand as tears leaked from her eyes.

But, harsh as it may sound, Mary was not interested in the crowd of guests at all. She was concentrating on the man standing at the end of the aisle, the man that shared this special day with her. The very man she had twice been engaged to, with no wedding. Until now.

As they reached the end of the aisle, Robert took Mary's silk gloved right hand from the crook of his arm and, kissing it gently, placed it on the top of Matthew's left hand. The man immediately raised his thumb to stroke the back of his fiancée's hand, while she secretly did the same to his palm.

Two rows behind, now standing before their pew, Sybil wiped a single tear from her eye, while Cora sobbed as quietly as she could into a lace handkerchief, gaining her an eye roll from both Martha and Violet, who were standing as far from each other as they possibly could, without attracting any unwanted attention, at least.

The Crawley couple, however, took no notice of any of this. In their eyes, no one else was present in the church. He was there, she was there and the priest to marry them both together. As harsh as it may seem, no one else present in the building mattered. If those three important figures were present, no others were needed.

Just over an hour later, the wedding party arrived back at Downton Abbey, with a new Mrs. Crawley in tow. It was rather strange to have both the bride and groom return to a shared home, and for the bride to return with the same surname as she left with, but the Crawleys were not a regular family. They were individual, and, though they may not admit it, they were rather proud of that fact.

Barely two minutes had passed since their arrival and the gravel outside the grand mansion was littered with rose petals, as family and staff alike celebrated the couple's return. The pair themselves had not stopped beaming since they had arrived at the church and, deciding to play to the cameras a little, had shared many a kiss on their way back.

"Congratulations, my darlings." Cora exclaimed, being the first to speak of the enormous reception her daughter and son-in-law had received. "I'm so proud of you, Mary, and Matthew, I am proud to have you as my new son. Welcome to the family."

"Well, technically, Cora, he was already in the family, now wasn't he?" Robert pointed out to his wife, who let out a small laugh, gently pushing the man's arm.

"Oh, you know what I meant!"

"Of course he does. He's just trying to toy with you, my dear, as he always does." Violet commented loudly, casting a vague glance from her son to his wife.

"Hmm, always led my Cora a merry dance, that one did." Martha commented in response, speaking to her daughter, yet maintaining a glaring eye contact with Violet.

"I assure you, Mrs. Levinson, your daughter did quite enough of her own dancing." the Crawley matriarch replied, a little bitterly.

"Well, from what I remember of your son, he-"

"Is standing right here, Mama. Let's all go inside now, shall we?" Cora asked, immediately ushering as many guests as possible inside, including Violet, though purposefully keeper her mother glued to her side. '_It would not do at all to have a fight so early in the evening.'_ Cora thought, as she watched the silver haired woman shoot a glare at the redhead while Robert led her inside. '_Least of all between my mother and my mother-in-law.'_

In the hallway, all three of the sisters had been standing in a cluster, watching their mother's reaction to the argument that seemed to be brewing between her own mother and their grandmother. It was probably their fault, in truth, as they had been provoking the two for the majority of the day, but it was so humorous to watch that any guilt from their actions was washed away in the fun of it all.

"Mary!" Robert called, from somewhere along the corridor towards the dining room. "Your guests are waiting for you."

"He's right, you know." Sybil pointed out, raising one eyebrow slightly, a talent that her sisters had been fascinated with when they were children. It still amused the girls so many years later how interested they had been in such trivial matters when they were younger. "You don't want to keep your guests waiting for you. Something may kick off between a select couple of people."

"Namely Granny and Grandmama." Edith added, a cheek filled smirk lighting up her face.

"I suppose we ought to avoid that." Mary agreed, taking her sisters' arms and dragging all three of them towards the source of their father's voice, with her usual subtlety, of course.

When they arrived there, the three sisters found the dining room in utter chaos. People were talking in clusters all across the room, children running left, right and centre, Pharaoh barking about the place and Matthew looking quite lost, as if he had been abandoned on a desert island with nothing.

"Oh, poor Matthew. Things look as if they are about to kick off with Granny and he was all alone. I almost feel ghastly about it." Mary pointed out, looking onto her husband with an expression of sympathy on her face.

"Oh, alright, then!" came a sudden exclamation from across the room. "It was me that invited her!"

All three girls turned in unison to see the confessor, who was still standing with one hand on her hip and another clutching her third glass of champagne.

Rosamund.

A/N: Uh oh! What will happen next?!


	6. Brewing of a Storm

Chapter Six

A/N: Thanks to Cls2011 and for reviewing.

"Aunt Rosamund?" Mary questioned, her eyes dramatically widened at the woman's outburst. "What do you mean?"

"I invited the old witch to the wedding." the woman laughed, the amount of alcohol she had assumed becoming more apparent with each slurring word she spoke. "I thought it may be a bit boring, so I decided to invite my little brother's darling mother in law along, just to add a spanner into the works. And it seems to have worked a treat!"

"So, you thought you'd invite my grandmother along to_ my_ wedding for entertainment purposes!" the eldest sister exclaimed, her annoyance showing just as clearly as her aunt's intoxication was. The woman merely giggled once again.

"Yes. That's exactly what I thought!" she replied, taking a wobbly bow and almost toppling over, which she would have done, had a dutiful Robert not been beside to catch her, sighing slightly as he did so, his sister's behaviour utterly mortifying for the entire family. Rosamund's reputation was too far gone to be recovered by this point.

"Rosamund Painswick, I can hardly believe you would do something like this." Violet pointed out, brandishing her stick in the direction of her inebriated daughter. "Well, actually, I can, and that is what's worrying me."

"Mama, I doubt that is helping." Robert pointed out, shaking his head from his mother's side.

"Yes, Violet. I'd listen to your little Robert, if I were you." Martha commented, smiling as a cat would when it had caught a mouse in a trap.

"Mama!" Cora exclaimed, her mouth agape in shock at her mother's outright rudeness, both towards her husband and her mother in law, though admittedly, she was not quite as angered by the latter.

"No, Cora! If your mother has something to say, then let her say it." Violet told her daughter in law, evidently becoming more riled by the moment.

"Alright, then, I will. Your family is ridiculous! You have never been good enough for my daughter, and I have said that from the very beginning!"

This outburst shocked the whole room into silence. The three sisters stood huddled together, disbelieving of what they had heard. Robert and Cora stood beside the girls, their hands intertwined, and even Rosamund had been silenced by the shock. The only ones moving in the room were the two matriarchs, who had each taken a step forward, anger showing clearly in both of their eyes.

"My Robert is plenty good enough for any woman. It just so happens that he chose your daughter, and you have been denying this fact for over thirty years. You have never thought that he was good enough for her. Well, Martha Levinson, you are wrong!" Violet told the woman, her voice building with each sentence, to the point where she was almost hollering by the last sentence, or speaking as loudly as she ever would without being uncouth.

"Oh, really? Because I don't think that she knew the mess she was getting herself into. And by the time she'd figured it out, it was too late!" Martha shot back, her voice far quieter than the elder woman's, yet laced with far more venom.

"Stop it, both of you!" Another shout had echoed through the air, but this time, it belonged to neither the Crawley matriarch, nor the Levinson one. The voice was Cora's.

"I knew exactly what I was getting myself into, Mama. I knew that my money was needed, I knew I'd be in a strictly controlled society, I even knew we would spend a third of the time arguing over things so trivial that they don't even warrant raised voices. I knew it all, Mama, and I would not change a moment for the world."

Cora's expression of her feelings had silenced both women once again, and had brought the majority of the room to quiet, as well. The Crawley family stood together, slightly apart from Violet, while Martha stood across the room from the group. Each of them was completely without noise, and without movement.

"This is my daughter's wedding, Mama, the second of them. I missed my baby girl's special day, for a trivial argument between the family stopped me from going." Cora told her mother, her intense gaze directed for a moment at Robert and Violet, both of whom looked extremely sheepish under her bitter glare. "So I want to see my eldest marry the man she has finally realised she had been in love with from the day they first met. You are not about to spoil this for me, like you did my own wedding, because I will not let you. So please, Mama, just be quiet."

To the surprise of all who knew of the woman, after her only daughter's outburst, the redhead had fallen silent. If there was only one in the world who could silence Martha Levinson in guilt, it was most definately her daughter.

The silence still held in the room at least three minutes later, and the woman had still hardly moved, bar from the time she spent shifted from one foot to the other, a habit the woman had never acquired during her lifetime. Not until now, at least.

"Cora… I'm sorry." came a quiet voice, quite comparable to the squeak of a dormouse. Martha was stood still, though a slight smile had surfaced on her face, as she waited for her daughter's response. To her further happiness, the younger woman also smiled, a clear sign that she had forgiven her mother.

"Alright. I know you are. I guess I was just a little riled, when I felt that Mary and Matthew's wedding was being overshadowed by a silly argument. I'm sorry as well." Cora told her mother, clasping the woman's hand in her own.

From behind the pair, Mary smiled. At last, the fights were over, and she could enjoy the remainder of her wedding reception in peace. '_Well, at least there will be no more incidents to spoil the day.'_

There seemed to be a mind reader somewhere in the room, as within a moment, another rift began to open, the stitches of a healed wound being pulled apart one by one.

"Well, I know an argument that isn't so silly, and I am certainly not going to let it lie any longer."

A/N: Who was it? You'll find out soon!


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